“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.'” ― St. Anthony the Great

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Why Am I Doubting That Assad Used Sarin?

There is a Turkish report circulating today that three victims were chemically poisoned by sarin gas. Link

The report falls short of chemical identification, instead hedging with evidence of symptoms which look like sarin poisoning. Yet sarin and sarin metabolites have distinct chemical fingerprints and isotopic signatures. The preferred method of detection is called GC/MS and it can detect very low quantities of the substance with absolute certainty. Of course, samples could be spiked with sarin, but even that would require sophistication.

I don't trust the Turks. Their President recently threatened friendly European governments with floods of refugees. Europeans fought the Ottoman Turks for centuries. We entered a war against Turkey's ally 100 years ago today. The Turks are no friend of democracy and are constantly harassing the Greeks.

Exactly who used or triggered chemical weapons last Tuesday is important. I am not impressed that our President has already made up his mind on both the types of weapons used and who used them. Trump has been proved right in the past. Perhaps he will be vindicated again. We shall see. There are many ways forward on how to gather more facts about this important matter. We should discuss them.

If he is simply taking out infrastructure, then I can understand the strike. If it's a function of softening the target for an invasion, then I'm not in favor of that at all. I'm curious to know what his actionable intelligence is in this case. He knows something we don't.

Did the Congress declare war on Syria? No? Then we have no business there.None. We have been at war in the region for 27 fricken years with no declaration of war. Trump really stepped on his dick. A good deal of his support was to stop doing this.

Military action, especially in the Mideast has unintended consequences. On the other hand, passivity also has unintended consequences. I hope this works out. Reagan's strike on Qaddafi worked out. Hillary's not so much.......You can bet on the probabilities but the probability in that neighborhood is that someone will do something improbably self destructive and stupid......I thought Assad was winning. Why would he use chemical weapons? Why would Saddam pretend to have a nuclear program?

Chick, I look at it like this. The United Nothing has lived up to its reputation as a feckless and cowardly organization of parasites. They pass resolution after resolution. Russia, China, Europe, or anyone else was or is going to do shit about Syria. Especially not with Trump basically pivoting and seeing the horrible imagery coming out of there, whether faked or not. If this happened under Urkel's watch, we know what he would have done. Nothing as usual.

So this is a much larger play on a strategic level. Trump can enforce UN sanctions against Syria as a signatory to not using WMD's/Chemical weapons against its own people, which Assad has done before, by targeting their ability to launch such strikes. It sends a clear message that this shit will stop or there will be consequences. Trump showed that he isn't fucking around. Good for him. The second is that Premiere Xi is here in the US when this strike was launched. The optics of that is not lost on either the Chinese, the Iranians, or the DPRK. It makes XI think twice on certain issues and gives Trump a distinct negotiating advantage in that whatever concessions Xi was willing to make, he will have to come up with a new strategy in light of this attack on Syria, which by the way, China does profit from along with Russia.

It gives Trump some leverage against China against the DPRK to show the little fat lunatic what could be in store for him if he thinks of doing more stupid shit. It also makes China think twice about laying claim to the South China Sea and potentially curtailing some of their expansionist ideas. Maybe. This has to play out and so far it appears that Trump is fairly content to simply launch this strike against a Syrian Air Base.

People think this is stupid. Fine, but it appears that a lot of the Islamocrat Proglodytes are on board.

All the hotspots we read about everyday and then suddenly this out of the blue?

It's too abrupt. From nothing to something just like that.

Why does Trump bust such a provocative move so suddenly?

It feels like the thing addressed directly with 60+ Tomahawk missiles, the airstrip, the airbase, the compound, whatever, is not the only thing being addressed, not the real thing going on. Obviously Russia leadership suddenly stands up erect poked from behind by the TRUMP DICK!

With China leadership right there at Mar a Lago. And North Korea leadership testing and behaving badly. And Iran leadership provoking American battleships, to name a few provocateurs outside the direct conversation but nonetheless intensely interested, mostly in Trump's difficult to measure motivations and observably strange behavior that's somewhat irrational on surface appearance sometimes.

Trump's response is impressively robustly serious but not just for Assad and for Syria. This is global attention on Trump's fitness to lead the U.S. and the whole planet.

Have you noticed, the 3-D chess games are weird? They increase board area, battle terrain, into new dimensions, but they do not increase playing pieces. Don't you think you should have bigger armies when the terrain is expanded like that with hills and dales? You need a lot more support. I looked at them. They're absurd.

I like having the other world powers unable to predict how Trump will react to provocation. They think they can read him, that they know him. In their way, all such things are tests. Intended as test or not these events still test now the whole world must refigure, recalculate their own positions and actions with this new and important Trump fluctuation.

Other powerful nations appear to achieve so much with so little comparatively. While we achieve so little with so much, apparently, and to our satisfaction. We're looking to Trump to achieve maximum affect with minimum expenditure.

Anyone else see the PBS Frontline show in North Korea the other night? (yeah I know... PBS) Surprisingly the show was interesting and did not make excuses for what most leftists who write for Frontline would normally support.. (communism) It was critical of the North Korean rulers and showed under-cover footage of the masses who all live in fear. Both the "haves" and the "have-nots" live in constant fear. The orphans living on the street, starving with nothing but dirty clothes to wear... heart breaking. If you are caught breaking a law or saying something against the regime, you will go to prison and you will be beaten. They will take your entire family to prison, for the crimes of one member. Under Jong-Un, satellite photos show prison buildings and complexes growing in sheer numbers to house all the "law-breakers."

If you try to escape by crossing the border, and they catch you - prison and harsh beatings. North Korea is not a communist paradise, it's a Potemkin Bizzaro world where everyone lives in fear. Kim Jong Un killed 50% of his father's inner circle of high ranking officials after taking power. The guy is a total psychopath. He was raised to be a psychopath.

chickelit said...It's heartening to read about American's concern for children. It certainly trumps their overbearing concern for pets and animals. Now if they'd only start caring about American children.

Trump has already intimated that the kids in Chicago getting killed will require a more federal response than what Emmanuel is willing to put out to make it stop. How that's going to happen, I'm not sure since those legal requirements are probably vastly different than launching Tomahawks in a sanctioned move against an already known state sponsor of terror.

I personally wouldn't mind seeing tomahawks launched into the chicago terror hot beds of gangs. You have to save them by burning them down. Works for me, but then again I'm a totalitarian when it comes to criminality.